POTTERY. 20f5 



England, or the Lake- villages of Switzerland. These frag- 

 ments, however, would generally be those of rude household 

 vessels, and it is principally from the tumuli that we obtain 

 those better-made urns and cups from which the state of the 

 art may fairly be inferred. Yet I know of no British sepul- 

 chral urn, belonging to ante-Roman times, which has upon 

 it a curved line. It is unnecessary to add that representa- 

 tions of animals or plants are entirely wanting. They are 

 also absent from all articles belonging to the Bronze age in 

 Switzerland, and I might almost say in Western Europe 

 generally, while ornaments of curved and spiral lines are 

 eminently characteristic of this period. The ornamental 

 ideas of the Stone age, on the other hand, are confined, so far 

 as we know, to compositions of straight lines, and the idea of 

 a curve does not seem to have occurred to them. The most 

 elegant ornaments on their vases are impressions of the 

 finger-nail, or of a cord wound round the soft clay. 



Dr. Wilson has well pointed out, that, as regards Europe, 

 "in no single case is any attempt made to imitate leaf or 

 flower, bird, beast, or any simple natural object ; and when, 

 in the bronze work of the later Iron period, imitative forms 

 at length appear, they are chiefly the snake and dragon 

 shapes and patterns, borrowed seemingly by Celtic and Teu- 

 tonic wanderers, with the wild fancies of their mythology ) 

 from the far Eastern cradle-land of their birth." Very 

 different was the condition of American Art. 



" The art of pottery attained to a considerable degree of 

 perfection." Some of the vases found in the tumuli are said 

 to rival, "in elegance of model, delicacy, and finish," the 

 best Peruvian specimens. The material used is a fine clay : 

 in the more delicate specimens, pure ; in the coarser ones, 

 mixed with pounded quartz. The art of glazing and the use 

 of the potter's wheel appear not to have been known, though 

 that " simple approximation to a potter's wheel may have 



